How to Actually Speak Like a Fargo Character

With help from the man who came up with the accents for FX's new series.

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Last night, FX's excellent Fargo premiered. The show is a 10-part mini-series based on the Coen Brothers classic 1996 film, and so the characters seem familiar, as does the plot: A dorky white dude has a come-to-jesus moment, forced to make tough decisions that have dire, terrible consequences. But from the first few minutes of the pilot alone, it's clear this isn't some two-bit adaptation, destined to soil the original.

Of course, nothing can bear the name Fargo without those unique midwestern accents. To get that authentic sound, Fargo (the TV series) turned to veteran voice coach and character actor Tony Alcantar, who helped Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, and the rest of the cast learn the regional dialect. Here, Alcantar breaks down five keys to high-quality Fargo-speak.

1. Determine How Much Fargo You Actually Know.

"In order to teach any accent or dialect, I first ask the actor, What do you know about this particular dialect? It's funny that sometimes when an actor is asked that, he'll say, Well, not much, and I'll say, Well, just give it a try in this particular accent. At that point the actor lays down what will serve as the starting point, and we go from there. It's like a personal trainer: Show me what you can lift, and we'll work to add more weight or more reps."

2. Aw, Heck: Throw out the Fargo movie knockoffs.

"Every actor knew the Fargo accent in its most stereotypical sound, but then I'd have to pull the actor back to make sure we weren't accent-acting. Nearly twenty years of Fargo send-ups have rendered the accent comical, and we didn't want to approach that. There's an expectation that it's going to be all, 'YAHH!'"

3. Find your lilt.

"If you compare to standard American English, [a Fargo accent] has a little bit more music to it. There's a little bit more lilt. If you look at the name of those who are not only in the story but in the state, there's a very strong Scandinavian grouping. If you look at the composition of the people and the social group's they belong to, there are German genetic roots. Their signature sound would be 'Yahh!' versus 'Yeah.' That's a very European term of agreeing."

4. Repeat.

"It's how anyone learns anything. Behind the scenes, the people who drove the transport van were all saying 'Yahh!' and 'You betcha!' We were speaking that way, and it got to be second nature. That's the key to learning any accent: Immerse yourself into it, and before you know it, you're speaking it."

5. Aw, Jeez: Try not to slip into your natural dialect.

"You never know when someone's going to slip into their first learned sound," he says. "There's one episode where Allison Tolman (who plays Molly, the new Marge Gunderson) was at the insurance agency. She walks in and says 'Mr Nygaard, I'm interested in buying some in-surance.' Alison was brought up in Texas, and that was a phraseology she learned. Clearly, people in Minnesota don't say insurance. They say IN-surance. Stuff like that creeps up unannounced. While everything is easier the more you do it, sometimes you slip up — we all do that."